“I want to thank all of you for the focus and commitment you have shown already. And thanks in advance for the concentration you will bring to the work that is still left. You’re almost home, ladies and gentlemen. Please, don’t take your eye off the ball now. Dante Halleyville is guilty of murder. If you value your safety and the safety of your loved ones, do not set him free.”
Chapter 101. Kate
FOR A COUPLE of quiet minutes spectators linger in their seats like moviegoers reading the closing credits. “We love you, Dante,” shouts Marie as two sheriffs approach the defense table to take him away. “It’s almost over, baby.”
“Yeah,” a guy in paint-splattered overalls calls from the door, “and then you fry!”
Tom and I shake Dante’s hand, which is still quivering; then the sheriffs put him back in handcuffs and lead him to the steel-cage elevator that will take him to the holding cell in the basement. On the opposite side of the room, another pair of sheriffs escorts the jury out a second door and walks them to a waiting bus. The bus will take them a quarter of a mile down the road to a Ramada Inn, where they’ll spend the weekend on the eleventh floor, sequestered from one another and the rest of the world.
After the jury’s bus pulls out, Tom and I slip out the same back door and hustle across the parking lot to where Clarence has left us his cab.
As we roll out the back exit in the yellow station wagon, TV reporters and other press are still waiting for us in front. By the time they realize what’s happened, we’re halfway to Sunrise Highway.
Neither of us says a whole lot during the drive home. Exhaustion is part of the reason, but mostly it’s shyness, or something like that. Suddenly alone together again, we’re not sure how to act. Actually, I’m thinking about the old days, when we were younger. During our senior year in high school, Tom and I saw each other just about every day-beach bums forever. It was pretty much the same way through college, and I went to almost all of Tom’s home games when he was at St. John’s. That’s why the breakup was such a shocker for me. I still didn’t know if I was over the hurt.
Anyway, when Tom pulls into Macklin’s driveway and I quickly get out of the car, I can read the disappointment in his eyes.
I’m feeling it too, but I’m so bone tired I need to get to my room before I collapse. I unbutton my skirt before I reach the top of the steep stairs, pull the shades, and crawl into bed.
The relief at finding myself horizontal between clean white sheets lasts a minute. Then my mind hits Rewind and Play and the second-guessing starts. Did Tom have to mention race? Were we right not to put Dante on the stand? Why was I so easy on Nikki? I should have shredded her. How hard could we really have been trying if we didn’t track down Loco? Who are we kidding-thinking we could win this case?
Then sleep, the loveliest gift a person ever gave herself, pulls the black curtain down.
When I sit up in bed again, awakened by what sounds like a woodpecker tapping against a pane of glass, it’s three thirty in the morning. I’ve been asleep for more than nine hours.
There’s another click on the glass, and then another click, and I climb out of bed and step groggily to the window.
I fumble for the shade, give one little tug, and it flies past my face up toward the ceiling.
Standing in the backyard, a bicycle lying at his feet, and about to throw another pebble at the window, is the only boy who’s ever broken my heart.
When Tom’s face breaks into a grin, I realize I’m naked.
Chapter 102. Tom
HOW CAN AN ex-NBA player miss a target the size of a door less than fifteen feet away? The pebble bounces off the siding, hits the edge of the gutter, and lands in the grass near my feet.
I scoop another little piece of Mack’s driveway out of my pocket and try again. This time I actually hit the window, and then I hit it again.
I’m wondering how many direct hits it’s going to take when the shade flies up and Kate stands at the window, the moonlight shining on her freckled shoulders and full breasts. After a couple interminable seconds, Kate lifts a finger to her lips and smiles, and I can breathe again, at least until the back door swings open and she steps outside barefoot in cutoff shorts and a Led Zeppelin T-shirt.
We tiptoe past the National Enquirer photographer asleep in his rented Toyota and walk down the middle of a sleeping Montauk street toward the beach. We leave our shoes under the bench behind the East Deck and cut through the dunes.
The sand is damp and cool, and the moonlight looks like a white carpet rolling toward us on the light surf.
Before the beach narrows, I find a spot near the cliffs to lay out a blanket, and Kate pulls me to the center of it. She stares into my eyes. Her eyes, straight out of sleep, look so naked and beautiful, and the wind whips her red hair around her face.
“Who are you, Tom?”
“I thought court was adjourned.”
“Really, Tom,” says Kate, and she looks as if she’s about to cry.
“A person who’s changed. A person who’s made mistakes. They’re behind me now.”
“Why should I believe that?”
“Because this whole thing has been as much about you as Dante. Because I’ve been in love with you since I was fifteen, Kate.”
“Don’t say things you don’t mean, Tom. Please. I’m enough of a sucker to believe them. Twice. I still remember when you called me on the phone to tell me that you didn’t love me. You were so cold. Maybe you don’t remember.”
“Ahh, Kate, if there’s no way I can ever win your trust again,” I say, a sickening desperation climbing into my throat, “you got to tell me now because I don’t know what else I can do. Back then, you know what it really was? I didn’t feel worthy of you, Kate.”
Maybe it’s the desperation in my voice that convinces her. I don’t know, but she pulls down my neck and kisses me on the mouth.
“I’m warning you,” she whispers in my ear, “screw up again and you’ll answer to Macklin. You love me, Tom?”
“Kate, you know I do.”
She pulls her T-shirt over her head, and her shorts drop to her feet, and with her white freckled shoulders and red hair Kate looks more beautiful than the woman in that painting standing on the seashell. I reach out one hand, and when I touch the tiny silver ring cut through her left nipple, her mouth drops open and her head falls back with pleasure.
“When did you get the piercing?” I whisper, reaching for her again.
“Which one, Tom?”
Chapter 103. Kate
IT FEELS AWFUL to be this happy, even happy at all, while Dante sits in jail, his life in the hands of a fallible jury. But what can I do? I’m just a person, and people can’t control the way they feel, and I feel happy. But I feel horrible about it too.
It’s Sunday afternoon, and Tom and I are still on that beach blanket, but now it’s spread out on his living room floor, and I’m leaning back against the base of his couch with the New York Times on my lap, looking for articles I might have underestimated the first couple times.
Tom sits next to me doing the same thing, and Wingo lies between us, snoozing on his side. The three of us have been sitting like this for the last thirty-six hours, and even with the weight of the verdict hanging over us and the shades pulled tight against the photographers and camera crews camped out across the street, it feels as if we’ve been together for years, not just two days. But of course, in a way we have. I’m trying to keep the past out of this, but when it does bubble up, it’s mostly the good stuff, not the breakup. The past ten years have humbled him, at least a little, and I like him more for it.